Apple to kill music reproduction quality - unless

Today Apple iTunes is the leading music store in the world, with very good reason: it is legal, it is comprehensive, it is easy to use.

But it has one major problem, it uses lossy AAC file compression. This, combined with 16bit and 44.1kHz sampling means that the resulting musicality is LESS than the CD.

I thought we were supposed to be moving forwards, not backwards? How can the industry support this move when clearly their way forward is to offer a better, not worse product?

And now we will get iTunes Match, which if I read is right, will take your ripped CD music and make available to you an AAC file for download to any of your devices (iPhone, iPad, etc). This will make the domination of AAC complete. Everyone will start to think that this is it, that this is the quality we can expect to listen to. WRONG.

It ought not to be like this. What I would like to see is iTunes offer

1 AAC 256Kbps as now, suitable for small storage devices like iPad, iPod and iPhone.

2 FLAC 24bit/48kHz files, suitable for terabyte storage like the TimeCapsule, or a NAS

3 FLAC 24bit/96 or even 192kHz files, ditto

With the rapid increase in broadband bandwidth and storage capacity delivering the FLAC files should not present too much problem. Of course the new Apple server complex will have to be much bigger to store the files, and our iPods and iPhone will have to accept and decode FLAC. But this should be the new industry standard.

The Airport Express and Apple TV (which can currently do 16bit/48kHz) should be upgraded to have a decent 24bit/48 or 96kHz DAC, and Airplay should be capable of transporting the FLAC files.

HD Streaming?

And by the way, if Youtube can stream video at HD quality, why is it not possible to stream HD sound? Why do we have to settle for this AAC stuff?